Standard Process has partnered with probiotic supplement company BIOHM to launch a Microbiome Test Kit, in order to provide health care practitioners and patients with guidance for good gut health. By partnering with BIOHM, which has completed thousands of consumer gut microbiome tests, Standard Process is better able to deliver insights that could help support the microbiome, inform dietary choices, and promote a healthy lifestyle.
 
Along with a healthy diet, quality supplements can play an important role in supporting digestive health, Standard Process said. However, if not aligned with patient needs, the potential health benefits of these supplements may not be fully realized. The results of the comprehensive Standard Process Microbiome Test Kit, together with the patient’s self-reported answers to a Lifestyle Questionnaire, will provide patients and practitioners with an assessment of their gut microbiome’s diversity. It will also identify the amount of beneficial, pathogenic, and neutral bacterial and fungal strains. It’s a first step toward suggesting purposeful changes, the company said.
 
“The Microbiome Test Kit will add another level of confidence for health care professionals when recommending adjustments to a patient’s lifestyle,” Ken Misher, product marketing manager at Standard Process, said. “This includes fine-tuning supplement, diet, and lifestyle recommendations.”
 
The Microbiome Test Kit consists of a two-part assessment, which includes patients’ answers to a questionnaire that covers diet, lifestyle, supplement consumption, and overall health, as well as gut microbiome analysis derived from a patient’s stool sample, which is generated from BIOHM Health’s next-generation 16S and ITS sequencing of bacterial and fungal populations in the stool. It provides an evaluation of the diversity and relative abundance of both bacterial and fungal strains within a patient’s gut microbiome.
 
Using bioinformatic analysis, the Microbiome Test Kit results are compared to the profile of a normal/healthy individual to provide insight as to whether the patient’s individual gut microbiome is balanced or imbalanced, called a “Gut Report.” The Gut Report includes a proprietary gut profile score index between 1 and 10 for each patient. The Gut Score is a calculation of BIOHM Health that may help provide certain insights into the overall condition of a patient’s gut microbiome, based on four criteria from the patient’s microbiome data: microbiome diversity, phyla balance, the beneficial species, and the pathogenic species.
 
“We’re thrilled to partner with Standard Process,” Afif Ghannoum, CEO of BIOHM Health, said. “Combining our world-renowned expertise in microbiome testing with their unparalleled history in whole food nutrition, allows us to collectively bring something very special to the practitioner channel.”

The Standard Process Microbiome Test Kit was developed by BIOHM Health, which is one of the world’s leading microbiome companies, which was co-founded by Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum, PhD. He is the company’s chief scientific officer and one of the world’s key opinion leaders on the microbiome and the interaction between bacterial and fungal communities, with over 480 peer-reviewed publications, and over 25,000 citations of his work in the scientific literature.